Fermata Mar 25, 2022: Rest for Blackademics

Fermata is the weekly newsletter describing some of the past week’s highlights from Notes of Rest, which is my spiritual retreat ministry that interweaves text, music, and questions for the sake of cultivating stillness, introspection, and creativity in communities so that all may rest. I'd love to host a Notes of Rest for your church, seminary, or affinity group. Feel free to reply to this email to start the conversation!

Blackademics and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Black Campus Ministries

Hi everyone,

This past week I hosted a Notes of Rest session for some of my “Blackademic” friends (i.e., Black and academic). It was special to have this shared affinity ground our reflection. We reflected on Isaiah 63, in which exilic Israel has returned from captivity to Jerusalem and is now facing a siege from the enemy Edom. In the midst of this assault, they petitioned The Lord for help, rehearsing how God had liberated and provided rest for their ancestors when they were in Egypt land. I got an interesting response from one of the participants to the question: How did God give your ancestors rest from their Pharaohs?

My friend said that he wasn’t convinced God had given his Black and indigenous ancestors rest from the modern-day “Pharaohs” of the US, but perhaps they were granted rest while still in the midst of Pharaoh. I appreciated this pushback because it helped me recognize the limits of analogy. While there are many similarities between the plight of Israel in Scripture and Black folk in America, there is much divergence, and that’s important to remember so that we don’t dissolve the particular theological identities of these respective communities. Yet even still, even if you feel like you’re in Egypt land under oppression, I pray The Lord give you and your community rest.

Another dope aspect of the session was that during Wellsprings, the response time at the end of the session, one of the brothas (an erudite scholar of African American Religious History) pulled out some Legos and gave himself permission to just play! He then proceeded to preach a sermon about possibilities from “the text” of his Lego construction. It was epic.

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A few weeks ago I hosted a session for the InterVarsity Black Campus Ministries Staff Conference (my old stomping grounds from a few years ago!). They couldn’t have their staff conference in-person due to COVID, so they invited me to host a virtual session. Here’s a testimonial from their National director, Shaylen Hardy:

“After having to shift our in-person conference to a virtual format, we were forced to figure out how to help staff have a retreat like experience after a year of virtual engagement and zoom meeting fatigue. Notes of Rest was exactly what we were looking for. The depth of reflective questions, intentional guidance, along with the amazing music in the background of our time, created space for our staff to wrestle with and name tensions we had been to distracted to notice. Our staff have already asked if it would be possible to have another session soon.”

May you find a way to rest this Friday.

abundantly,

Julian